Prisons
by darcyfarrow
Summary: The Dark One's in prison-why did he allow himself to be caught? Told from three perspectives: Charming's, Snow's and Rumplestiltskin's.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N. This story takes place right after "The Price of Gold."**

Charming

I haven't been sleeping well lately. And it's not because my eight-months-pregnant wife keeps getting up in the middle of the night to use the chamber pot. It's like they say: it's not easy being king. Or more precisely, the queen's consort.

We live in one of Leopold's smaller castles: we sold the others to raise money for our armies. The war may be over, George and Regina are deposed, but the battles rage on: loyalists to the former king and queen, and opportunists who see what a mess things are in and think they can depose us. It's always something. If not a rebel uprising, it's backstabbing and power-grabbing in the inner circle, or it's the public, crying for a reduction in taxes, or it's neighboring royals, wanting us to help them fight their wars or feed their people. Like we don't have troubles enough of our own.

And the worst of it all: we won but we didn't eliminate our enemies. George is still out there somewhere; we're not hearing a peep about him, so I suppose he's run off to another land and most likely he'll be trying to build himself back up to take his kingdom back. He's not one to know when he's beat.

And Regina. She's still calling herself a queen, though she has no realm to rule. She has a following though: hangers-on who believe she'll rise again because she still has her magic. I won't say it to anyone, especially my pregnant wife, who has enough to deal with, but I'm sure we'll hear from Regina again, and I'm not so sure we'll beat her next time. Rumor has it her magic's growing stronger and so is her desperation. She loves wealth and power, but she'll gladly sacrifice them both if it means she can kill Snow. She can't even get it through her thick skull that she will never be able kill Snow! Rumplestiltskin's protection spell sees to that. How do you beat an enemy like Regina? I suppose we'll have to figure it out. But I can't help wishing I hadn't let Snow talk me into stopping Regina's execution.

And now Regina's plotting this "curse to end all curses" and though I had some doubts—I mean, it sounds impossible, what she claims she's going to do; she's powerful, yes, and devious and crafty and all that, but this curse, if it really will do what she says it will, well, it would take someone with a whole lot more patience than she has to create a thing like that. She's smart enough, but she's not an original thinker, just doesn't have the patience to make a new idea come to pass. Well, maybe it won't work the way she says, but the fairies say there is some kind of disturbance in the air, and Snow's birds are growing crazy over it, so we have to take it seriously. But how do you prepare for a curse that's supposed to take your entire kingdom off to some foreign land and wipe out everybody's memories?

So we've got George, who's out to get me; we've got Regina, who's out to get Snow with this curse; and we've got a kingdom in chaos. In the middle of all this, we're trying to start our family.

But at least we've got one less thing to worry about: Rumplestiltskin. The world's a little safer—hell, a lot safer—now that he's locked up tight. If I've got anything to say about it, he's going to spend the rest of—well, I was going to say "his life in prison," but he's immortal. I know that's true: I've seen enough people try to kill him. I would've executed him myself right after we caught him, if he could be killed.

Some nights when I can't sleep, I think whatever "curse" Regina's got in mind may not be all that bad. Seems like we're already cursed.

Some nights when I can't sleep, it's the prisoner downstairs I'm worrying about. George and Regina are out there loose, and he's locked up tight but—but I wonder if it wasn't too easy, the way we caught him. I mean, they say he's three hundred years old, and we know he's the most powerful mage of all, and he's the Dark One, the most hated being in the world. A guy like that has got to have people trying to catch and control him every day, right? I've had a bunch of run-ins with him myself, and—the guy's smart. He figure you out just by looking at you. It was a pretty clever trick we came up with to catch him: we took advantage of that compulsion he has to make deals. But still I wonder. . . .

He's down there, living just three stories down, directly under my bedroom. Sometimes I almost think I can hear him breathing. Or laughing.

I'm doing what I can to weaken him. I'm not sure I completely trust that fairy dust. A weak, sick Dark One may be our only hope for keeping him in check. I'd kill him if I could. My family and my people would be safer for it. That sounds cruel, maybe even inhumane, but I have a kingdom to protect. And the morning after we announced we had him locked up, every village in the Enchanted Forest celebrated.

Snow wants to go down there. She says she's worried about the curse and wants him to prophesy for her. She wants to hear that the baby will be all right, that she and I will find a way to keep our family together. Even if it's in this horrible place Regina's threatening us with, as long we're together, Snow believes we'll make it work. I've been resisting her requests to see Rumplestiltskin, because I know she has an ulterior motive. She's too kind, and she wants to make sure he's all right down there. If she saw what we've been doing, it would break her heart; she wouldn't understand. These are the hard decisions a leader must make.

Besides, after the way we tricked him, he'd tear this castle down around our ears if he could. Our baby's not safe as long as he's alive.

I keep wondering, though. All the evil he's done—he's a killer, a baby-snatcher, a cheat, a liar—but in all his dealings with me and Snow, he was. . . helpful. Snow even says she thinks he's genuinely concerned for her. I can't forget what he did to my parents, taking a baby away from them, and then to my mother in her old age when she needed me most, but he took me away. That's the worst crime, even worse than murder, I think, to steal kids from loving parents. Like he wanted to do with Ella's baby.

But then he did help me to find Snow and stop her from assassinating Regina, and all he charged me for it was a cloak. That deal's never made sense to me: he's the most powerful mage in the world; if he's cold, all he's got to do is snap is fingers and he can turn winter into summer. What's he need a used cloak for?

And the ring. He made me fight a dragon for that deal, and it was my ring to begin with; I guess I got cheated. But when he gave it to me, the things he said. . . .and he threw in a new suit of clothes too. I still have that suit; it's held up well. It's just that—well, I suppose he was fooling me, but those times I dealt with him, I thought he almost liked me. That he was on our side, me and Snow.

I thought getting Rumplestiltskin out of the way would feel a lot better than it does.


	2. Chapter 2

Snow

Regina is coming. I know this as surely as I know my baby's name. She is coming and because she can't kill us, she will make good on her threat to ruin us with her curse, even though she'll be destroying her own life in the process. Charming tries to deny it, for my sake; his gallantry makes me love him all the more, yet we can't play this game much longer. Regina is coming; no amount of wishing will make that not so.

In the evenings I sit beside the fire and try to knit, but my fingers fumble, my mind wanders. I was not made for sitting and knitting. I sing my baby songs instead, soothing songs, because I believe she can sense the strife around me and her father, and I don't want her coming into this world with worries already placed on her tiny shoulders. Babies should believe their world is a safe and comfortable one.

But Regina is coming; soon we will have to face that fact. A war council will be called; the arguments will begin; we will figure out our options and draw up our war plans. Let there be no doubt: there must be war.

I trust my husband with my life, with my baby's life, but there are three pieces of information I have yet to share with him because it's not the right time. The first is that I've already seen our baby, in what most would say was a dream, but I know it to have been a vision. She has my chin and her father's eyes, and her name is Emma, and someday she will slay dragons.

This piece of information raises the warrior in me. When the time comes, I will fight Regina, curse or no.

Ten weeks it has been since a very pregnant Ella and her prince came to ask Charming's help. I was left out of this council, a highly unusual omission, for Charming and I have always made all decisions together, just as we have always fought our enemies. For the baby's welfare, Charming said, that's why we must spare you from the horrible things that are happening. For Emma, I told myself silently, I will accept this exclusion. My pregnancy has not been easy, complicated by my lack of appetite and proper rest. I must think of Emma first, and not just as a mother, but as the queen and the mother of the next queen. For Emma and for my people, then, I allow myself to draw back from the affairs of state.

But when I learned the outcome of that meeting—when I learned that the three of them had conspired against the most powerful mage in the world, and when I learned that they had, through their elegant trickery and a moment of weakness on his part, captured and imprisoned Rumplestiltskin, I grew angry—at them, for leaving me out of the discussion; at myself, for allowing it to happen under my nose. Truly, they never, never should have done it.

No one cheats Rumplestiltskin.

And especially not us. We are honorable people. We lead a kingdom; our people need us to be honorable. Our daughter needs us to be honorable.

Danger has been brought down upon our heads. But there is no going back now, and no going forward: we can't release him or banish him or execute him. Unless Regina's curse succeeds, he will remain our prisoner for the rest of our lives, for our children's lives, our grandchildren's, and on into eternity, until our lineage dies out, for the Dark One cannot die.

Except he can. That is my second secret: I know there is a way to kill the Dark One. I heard rumor of it first long ago, while Cora was still alive, before my father married Regina; I heard confirmation of it after my father died and Queen Regina began studying the black arts. It became a matter of primary interest to Regina, once she had completed her apprenticeship: she consulted book after book, mage after mage, in answer to the question of how to kill her former master. Whether she sought to take his power or take revenge for some grievance—perhaps some deal she'd made with him that didn't go as she wanted—I don't know; perhaps both.

I don't know the means, but I do know it is possible to kill the Dark One. As I contemplate the future that we and our descendants are now locked into because we hold the Dark One prisoner, I wonder if it wouldn't be wiser for all of us, for our kingdom and the kingdoms to come, if we relieved ourselves of this burden.

If we learned the means and killed Rumplestiltskin.

He suffers. I am not permitted to enter the underground cell in which he is kept—not good for the baby; it's dark and damp and cold there, and no telling what Rumplestiltskin might do to me. I argue that there's nothing more than shouting that he can do: the fairy dust blocks his magic, and though he is strong, he can't break through the barriers the dwarves have erected. No human contact can be permitted, Charming says then; he may be caged and de-fanged, but he still can bite. He has power in his words.

Charming doesn't realize what he's said. My heart sinks. _Dark and dank and cold. No human contact_. And we, the honorable, do this to our prisoner. How does this punishment compare, I wonder, to what he has done? I bribe the guards who take him his meals; they show me what they have been feeding him. I am sick at stomach and sick at heart.

He is a killer. He is a cheat and a mangler of the truth. He is a danger to the stability of our fragile alliances with other kingdoms, for he is no respecter of treaties; he is a kingdom unto himself and he needs no other, so he flits from nation to nation.

But. . .we wouldn't be here if not for him. Charming would be a half-starved shepherd married off to a merchant's daughter for a sackful of grain as dowry. I would be hiding in the forest. Regina and George would rule these lands and Emma would not exist.

I know what Rumplestiltskin has done for us. I am grateful. It pains me and shames me that he suffers. I will force changes; I will ensure he's treated humanely. But at the same time I wonder: would it be more merciful if we could execute him?

But I remember our attempted execution of Regina. If I couldn't go through with it then, against one would will kill my husband and me and our baby, I could not go through with it now, against one who brought my husband and me and our baby together.

Is there no other way to stop him? As he took away Regina's power to kill us, could she take away his power to kill?

But when I consider this possibility—I'm not so sure I want his powers taken away. And that is my third secret: for all her boast, for all her rage, Regina is afraid of Rumplestiltskin. He may be the only thing left in this world that can stop her.

The man we hold prisoner in a dark, dank, cold cell—the man we deny clean water and fresh air and sunshine and a bed—the man we feed maggots to—this man may be our last hope.


	3. Chapter 3

Rumplestiltskin

Imagine a tomb.

Imagine your worst enemy is standing atop that tomb and you're inside. Imagine trying to kill that enemy with every arrow in your quiver, every sword you can yield.

Not very productive, is it?

Now you've got the concept, the same concept Charming had when he tossed me into this hellhole. He thought he was truly trapping me in and out: in, where I could release no magic upon the world, _his_ world; out, out of the way of other practitioners of magic who might wish to consult me or join forces with me. Regina, for example, who was known to frequent my doorstep, sniffing like the sleek but greedy hound she is for any tidbits of magic I might throw her. And out, out of his way, as he struggled to take command of a fragmented kingdom—least I, known to be an occasional confederate of the newly deposed George, might choose to align myself with rebel forces. And out, out of the sight of his kind-hearted bride Snow, who was known to have a bit of a soft spot for me, and I for her.

Charming thought, in this hole in the cold, dank ground, his family, his friends, his kingdom, his power would be safe from me—_he_ would be safe from me.

"A scourge," indeed. That's what he called me. And after all I've done for him.

He doesn't know the half of what I've done for him.

Imagine your worst enemy standing atop that tomb and trying to slay you. Now you have the true picture.

Charming thought he'd made his kingdom safe from the Dark One. You really don't think I'd allow that, do you? Anything I wanted done in the world would still be done; I'd already set all that in motion, whether by magic or by manipulation (what your world calls "social engineering." Lovely term.)

He thought he was protecting his world from me. The boy never was one to think things through, or else he would have realized he was also protecting me from his world. Or rather, what was about to happen in his world.

I've been around a very long time, you see. I don't know exactly how long, because I was born a peasant, and peasants in those days were illiterate. I was also born into a large family, so my arrival was nothing special. In fact, if they could have written the date down, my parents probably wouldn't have bothered: they didn't expect me to survive more than a few days, infant health care, sanitation and my own weak constitution considered. I fooled them, though. I've fooled them _all_.

I've been around a very long time, and I've been the Dark One nearly three hundred years. Being raised an unwanted, kicked-around weakling gave me cellular-level distrust of people; when the dark curse invaded my body, it only enhanced that inclination toward suspicion, so I don't fool easily. It's happened, but it's an event as rare as the arrival of a comet. So when Charming and his bride conspired with Ella and her groom to imprison me, if you think that was a trap I fell into, you're as simple as they.

That was a "trap" _I_ created. I might as well have made it easy for myself—hung a sign above my head: COME GET ME. But Snow is too bright to accept anything that easy, especially from me, so I had to manipulate them into "trapping" me.

A deal's always more fun when the other guy thinks it's his idea.

My imprisonment was my idea; I planted it in their pretty little heads. But you always suspected that, didn't you? You just never could figure out why (you love a man of mystery!).

I wanted to be in that fairy-dust dungeon because the final curse was coming (call it Regina's curse, if you like; I would just as soon you think of it that way. I prefer to be the wizard behind the curtain. Get more done without an audience.). You know the rules of the curse; I needn't take the time to explain it.

If you think it through—as Charming did not—nor Snow, which surprises me; I suppose she was preoccupied with motherhood—it makes sense. Everything I do makes sense, eventually. The fairy dust lining of this hellhole keeps my magic in—but it also keeps magic out. Even the worst magic imaginable.

Which means I have a layer of protection against Regina's (my) curse.

It's not perfect. And that's the beauty of it, really. This hellhole was a mine: it contains pockets of fairy dust. It's not like the lid on a kettle; it's more like a coffee filter. Where the gaps are, magic can get in. The fairy dust will strain the curse, when Regina finally gets off her butt and casts it; I'll be getting the coffee water, not the grounds.

Which gives me a bit of an advantage over everyone else that Regina is dragging along with her to the land without magic: I'll have a few memories left. I have to work to hold onto them, but I have plenty of time for that.

If you know my history, you may wonder what I would want to remember. It's true that it would be so much easier to walk away from the life—the lives—I've led here. _Tabla rasa_, for me, means freedom. But if you know my history at all, you know there is one memory I will fight like hell to retain: the reason I created this entire situation, the reason—the only reason—I live. Baelfire.

The damned fairies stole him from me. It's poetic justice that their magic will see to it that Regina's (my) curse will not steal him from my heart. As soon as we arrive in the new land, I shall hit the ground running, setting into motion the events that must happen to break the curse and to restore my power, so that I can find Bae. On the day we arrive, numb from the neck up, moving like automatons within the scripts Regina (and I) have written, when no one else can remember their children—I will.

Don't think I'm doing myself any favors. It will hurt like hell to remember him and be unable to start my search for twenty-eight years (10,220 days; 14,726,880 minutes). Every face I look into, I'll be seeking his, though I'll know better. Every child's laugh, I'll think could be his, though I'll know better. Every time the word "Papa" is spoken.

All magic comes with a price, and this is the price I'm paying for my (Regina's) curse. But during those twenty-eight years, as I wait for the curse-breaker to become the woman she will have to be if she's to save us, I will pay with my memories and my nightmares for breaking my deal with my son, and I will be ready.

A hundred times I write—slowly, carefully, because each stroke of the quill burns another memory—the curse-breaker's name on a scroll I begged from Charming (so that I could write my last will and testament, I claimed; no captor could refuse such a plea). It's not magic; it's muscle memory. Her name is carved into the cells of my blood: Emma, Emma, Emma. In the new land, in my deepest sleep, my hand will move automatically, scratching her name on my blankets: Emma, Emma, Emma.

And this is where the magic comes in: that name is my trigger. When she arrives in our façade of a town, as soon as I hear her speak her name, a kernel of magic will burst open in my head, and I will remember everything else about my lives, and I can begin the work of shaping this lost child-woman into a dragon-slaying curse-breaker. She will despise me for it, but a curse-breaker she will become. She won't be the first to hate me for providing an education. Her own parents and the curse-caster all were schooled by me, and all have hated me for it. As long as it achieves my aims—as long as it provides a cog in the grand machine that will bring me to Bae, they may hate me all they please.

Figuring out how to get the savior to come to this façade of a town, in a land so vast and so full of distractions, that took me years. At last a vision showed me what to do. Prophesy is the most difficult of all forms of magic, and the most draining; I practiced it rarely. Until I discovered the formula that would produce the final curse, I had little interest in seeing the future. Managing the present was work enough, thank you very much. But when all the elements were in place to assemble the curse, I needed information about the future, so I sequestered myself for days on end to devote every grain of my magic, every drop of my energy to visions. It was through visions I learned of Emma, of course; and visions showed me the lure that would bring her to us.

In my visions I saw her, alone and despairing (though not afraid—she carries dragon-slayer blood in her veins) in a prison. When I first made this discovery, I broke off the vision immediately: seeing her in prison sent me into a selfish depression. For you see, a prophet doesn't watch a vision unfold from a safe distance; he lives it. He touches and tastes and smells and breathes it right along those who people the vision. So when I saw the young curse-breaker in prison—though it was, as prisons go, quite clean and comfortable, nothing like this hellhole her father has dumped me in—I. . . yes, all right, I empathized with her. The Dark One, dearies, does have a conscience, fight it as I must.

When I had hardened my heart, I looked again, and I saw something I had overlooked: the curse-breaker wasn't alone after all. And that's how I found out about Henry.

He wasn't always called Henry. You know how he acquired that name. In the beginning, his mother called him Neal, after his father. Not out loud—she never spoke his name out loud. Instinctually, for she's a princess of the Enchanted Forest, though she doesn't know that, she knows that names have power, and she believed she would never see this child again after his birth, so she had no right to have power over him. What she didn't realize then was that this child would have such power over her.

In my visions I saw him, the boy who will be king—for, yes, he will return to the Enchanted Forest when he has reached his majority and he will be king over all the land. Under him, the fragmentation that exists now will exist no more. I saw him being born, I saw him being taken away. I saw his mother sign a contract giving up her rights to him.

As soon as I saw a contract being signed, I had my entrée. Rumplestiltskin is a master of the contract. Through a contract I would bring Neal-Henry to Storybrooke; he would be the hook to reel Emma in.

Did I just say "hook"? Egads.

I am where I want to be, perfectly positioned for the arrival of the curse. I will admit, however, I didn't expect it to be quite such a hellhole. Truly, I expected better of Charming. He has provided me with no fire to warm myself, no bed to sleep in, no water to wash myself, not even a change of clothes; the "food" his guards thrust at me twice a day consists of a cup of weak wine and a plate of pottage, meatless unless you consider maggots meat. What it lacks in nourishment, it makes up in grease. I sleep on a mat on the dirt. I haven't seen a ray of sun- or moonlight in two months. I have no light, no books, no conversation, no sense of time. The air is foul and damp and my lungs ache as I breathe in dust.

No human contact is permitted. I'm considered too dangerous, even in this malnourished, dehydrated condition. Just as well, I suppose: no one would come near me in my unwashed state.

Regina will come, despite the prohibition. Regina is no respecter of laws, not even her own. She needs guidance and shoring up before she casts the curse. And she needs to gloat: her old master thrown low. She has sought my downfall ever since she discovered the hoax Frankenstein, the Hatter and I perpetrated on her. Fair retribution, I suppose.

Someday, when my work is done and my son stands by my side again, I shall balance the scales with the lovely queen and with the shepherd-prince too.

What the lad doesn't realize, all warm and toasty with his lovely bride in bed three stories above my head, is that he's in prison too.


End file.
